CreativePlay Plus: Ideas in Play and Child Development

Most children are naturally delighted and excited by the discoveries they make about their world. The playful stance that children tend to take early on as youngsters is likely one of the reasons children seem propelled toward greater curiosity and novelty seeking. Research supports associations between playfulness with many positive characteristics like:

• Creativity
• Humorousness
• Emotional expressiveness
• Curiosity
• Openness
• Communicativeness

These findings suggest that children who are more playful may be further effective and efficient at dealing with problems. Also, children who learn in a more playful learning environment may be extra willing to try new things and engage in a task. Consider our previous post about Sir Ken Robinson’s claim that most educational school systems “kill creativity.” Perhaps promoting and modeling a playful way of teaching and learning may support older children to be just as excited about learning as they were when they were youngsters.

Undoubtedly an important aspect of child development is a child’s ability to be playful. No one knew this better than Dr. Seuss who said:

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, which is what I do. And that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.”

To be playful means to have a flexible understanding and approach to life. It also means having the ability to make an experience more joyful and entertaining. If you have a child, you understand that most children inherently have this gift to make a lot of situations fun when given the opportunity. Even something as simple as walking from the car to the front door could mean a chance to skip, twirl, fly, and buzz all the way home.  We write a lot about the importance of giving children time to play, but having a playful disposition may be just as important as the act of playing itself. One way to help your child be playful: reading books by creative writers like Dr. Seuss. Another way, be a playful parent! That way, when they come up against a boring or scary situation they have the freedom to escape into their imagination and make light of some of life’s tedious tasks.

Most parents will agree that mathematical skills are big deal.  So what do you do when your child doesn’t seem interested in numbers? Try this clever number match game from mommy blogger Allison at No Time For Flash Cards.  What we like about this game is that you can adjust it to be more or less challenging for kids depending on their development level.  The best part is you only need colored construction paper and a marker to get your math magicians learning!

The social and cognitive benefits of recess and free play are too important to be ignored. During recess children learn valuable social skills like learning to negotiate with peers in order to keep playing with them.

“I want to play on the monkey bars too.  How about we take turns?”

“You got to choose 4-square yesterday, today let’s play tag, okay?”

“Come play with us! We need more people to play kickball! It will be fun!”

Recess also gives children opportunities to become comfortable with deciding how they want to spend their free time and who they want to spend their time with.

The argument that physical education is a good substitute for recess is not adequately supported. The instructional nature and highly structured time found in physical education classes does not allow children the same sort of free time to explore, be creative, or control how they spend their time with peers, on their terms. Physical education also does not give them the time to practice sophisticated ways to compromise and resolve conflicts.

Dr. Anthony Pelligrini has studied important questions like, does what children do on the playground predict school achievement? In fact, Dr. Pelligrini found that the behavioral measures he developed to observe children at recess actually predicted first grade achievement better than kindergarten test scores.  Meaning, playground behaviors should be considered an important part of child development that could determine academic success of children early on in child education.

How do you feel about the amount of free-play time your children gets at school? Do you agree that play could potentially promote academic success?

Dr. Anthony Pelligrini is a notable scholar of recess and the education system. According to him, recess is disappearing because school administrators are more concerned with increasing instructional time and claim that recess promotes bullying and aggressive behaviors.

The argument that recess is not as developmentally important as instructional time is not well founded. We know from extensive research, that children who are asked to perform a school task are significantly more attentive after recess than when they are deprived of a break. (See our previous posts, A breath of fresh air and More than just a walk in the park)

Moreover, the argument that recess promotes negative interactions between children is also not supported. In a cross-cultural study, conducted by Pelligrini, they found that less than 2% of behaviors observed on playgrounds are physically or verbally aggressive. Additionally, with adequate adult supervision, this rate becomes even lower. We also know that children who are bullied are also bullied at lunch, on buses, in bathrooms, just about anywhere where children are not well monitored by adults. In actuality, lack of adult supervision may more likely be the culprit in creating opportunities for children to be aggressive.

How much time does your school district allot for recess or free play periods? Are your children monitored well during recess? What do you think of this argument? Do you think children are bullied more on the playground than any other setting at school?

Playday is an annual event in the UK that celebrates children’s right to play. On Playday thousands of children and communities will take part in locally organized events across the UK.  While this is a great opportunity for children to get out and play, the Playday campaign raises awareness about serious issues affecting children’s play. For instance, creative play is essential for physical and emotional growth, mental, intellectual and educational development, and for acquiring social and behavioral skills.

Learn more about Playday in the UK.

The recent frigid temperatures may be keeping your kids indoors lately. Since they can’t stay outside long enough to build a snowman, make one indoors!

Our friend Allison at No Time for Flash Cards created an easy snowman craft that is actually a counting and motor skills activity in disguise! In just several steps, your little ones will be practicing their hand-eye coordination and motor skills.

I recently came across a great blog post about the value of creative play featuring an interview with Susan Linn, Director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.  Linn is also the author of The Case for Make Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World, which focuses on the notable shift in the way our children play in today’s world.  This book explores how we’ve gone from encouraging imaginative play and engagement in make believe to giving games, toys, and DVDs that lead children into defined role learning and stifling their growth and development.

This post begins with a description of a simple technique Linn used at a workshop dedicated to creative play.  Linn presented several puppets and asked each attendee to describe specific attributes about each character.  The first puppet introduced was an ordinary sock puppet and the final character introduced was Cookie Monster, a beloved character from Sesame Street. The variety of the responses received for the ordinary sock puppet and the limited responses received for Cookie Monster easily proved Linn’s point; we need to give kids open-ended opportunities to play, rather than force certain associations onto them.

In this interview, Linn responds to basic questions that many parents may have asked about before but not received the answers. Questions like, why is television really so “bad” for kids?  How could a few minutes here and there actually negatively affect their development?  She also gives her opinion on the “Mozart Effect,” the theory that classical music can enhance children’s intelligence, and why she believes it is essentially false.  She does however recognize that music is an important part of childhood development.

Linn’s answers are easy to understand, based on research and her own field experiences, and she exhibits true empathy towards parents. The information presented in this post is a valuable reference for parents and caregivers who believe in the power of creative play.

It seems like every time the New Year rolls around, we make resolutions to ourselves.  Lose weight. Stick to a budget.  Get organized.  So often, it seems as if those resolutions just end up falling by the wayside!  Maybe it’s time to make some resolutions that are easier to stick to, more specific, and more realistic so that we may actually accomplish them.  Instead of worrying about that extra 10 pounds, why not resolve to make 2010 the year creative play becomes an important part of life in your home?

Start by taking a look at the toys in your household – are there things the kids have outgrown?  Give them to charity!  Most likely, those toys won’t even be missed.

Next, cast a critical eye at the quality of the toys – can kids learn from and be inspired by them, or are they the types of toys which lead children into specific forms of directed play?  If you’re seeing a lot of things that wouldn’t lend a creative spark to play, put them away!  You don’t have to get rid of them, but take this opportunity to make these toys a “last resort” for an especially snowy or rainy day.

Finally, note what you have around the house that could be used for creative play, and if you haven’t already, start a “prop box” for kids to go to when you hear the words all caregivers dread the most – “I’m bored!”  The box can contain almost anything, from last year’s Halloween costumes, to towels, to stuffed animals, and even your old clothes.  Kids have the creative capacity to be inspired by almost anything, and chances are, your house is a treasure trove of potentially exciting and stimulating props that will allow them to imagine, create, and explore well into the next year, and beyond!

Around 18-months of age babies start adding words much more quickly — sometimes several in one day. At the same time, they start showing a lot more imagination when they play. They feed their dolls and tuck them into bed. They also become magicians who can transform a wooden block into a car, airplane, telephone, sandwich, or a cup of tea all by pretending!  Symbolic thinking is the great achievement of the toddler years—even more remarkable than walking. Make believe play and language have a strong connection because they both rely on symbols—things that stand for other things.

• Great gifts to help develop language skills and imaginative play abilities: picture books, dolls (for boys as well as girls), plastic animals (make sure these are too big to fit inside a toilet paper  roll, to prevent choking), and best of all simple building blocks that a child’s imagination can turn into anything and everything!

Intentionally not on my list of best toys: electronic talking toys. Why? Because these gizmos are designed to do the work of imagining for the child. Often sold as educational toys, what they really teach children is to expect to be entertained. Young children learn best when they are actively involved in solving problems and creating things. If I could wave my Developmental Santa magic wand and make these developmentally inappropriate toys disappear, I would!